What happens to us, the atheists? Don't we get a say in the constitutions? We should demand that constitutions of all countries should specifically denounce the belief in all forms of fairy tale gods. Belief in any form of religion is absurd, against common sense, intolerant and extremely dangerous. They promote hatred among the citizens of a nations and hence should be suppressed by all means.

Prove it ! .... Government is all based on the Social Contract... ''You can't tell me what I can or can not do'' does not fit into what government and the body politic tries to accomplish.... indeed without a Social Contract... you have anarchy..... The truest form of atheism is indeed anarchy in a moral form.... there would exist no justice... murderers would get away with cold hard murder.... so... Tell me again what you want?

I should also note that I would prefer to base my morality on reason and concern for the well-being of others than on some ancient text that tells me to kill people left and right for absurd reasons (like practicing homosexuality, which, thanks to your religion, was illegal in much of the U.S. until 2003).

In other words, if morality is based on whatever God deems to be moral, if God (or, rather, the humans who invented God) says slavery is OK, then slavery is OK. And what a coincidence, the Bible is OK with slavery! In fact, one of the largest conservative Christian denominations (the Southern Baptists) was founded specifically to defend slavery. Reason and concern for others, on the other hand, allows us to reject slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, and every other ill in our society (that conservative Christianity usually approves of until much later), regardless of what God says.

Religion exists for political reasons: once people accept to sumbit to god thinking that he owns them and they are his slaves, it becomes easy for the political and church hierarchies to control the population.

Where does this fit into the American 'experiment?'... Actually, you give religion too much sway, alone.... ideas themselves, ideologies themselves can pursuade folks... ala Communism and Fascism.... True Atheism has zero morals or standards... and so there is no establishment of a real society... because practically by definition a society needs a Social Contract, a constitution of rights, law & order... You can actually say religion keeps the standard high for all to enjoy their own rights, as it was religion (Roman) that gave us the ideas of Social Justice.... But of course there are sure cases of abuse or limitation as well

- atheism does not have zero moral standards
- ideas of social justice have not originated by Roman religion. Take for example Hammurabi Code: it has been an inspiration for social laws, habits in many cultures, incl. biblical 10 Commandments.

And yes, there are way too many abuses and limitations to the religion. Because it is a political system, having nothing to do with morality, only with imposed and abusive control on people.

Actually it would be hard to say in anyway that atheism does have any moral code... What would the moral codes be based from???? ''a good idea?''.. Law of the land? The idea of independence?.. TRUE Atheism, I stress true... has no basis for anything, if all we are are bilogical, material accidents, then on what basis is any action immoral? A created being would then be allowed to be 'themselves' and no one could claim them to be wrong, even a murderer.. which begets a tyrant....

Hammurabi code has no form of 'Social Justice'--- Social Justice has to do with unalienable rights, that is.. there is a sense of what we all have a right to by natural law... this comes from christiandom.. this is a fact, not disputed

The beauty of the American constitution is it's initial simplicity which has allowed it to evolve organically to match the needs of the country, without being at the same time so fluid as to permit of an excessive flexibility. The American constitution provides an ample blueprint for the sort of society and the direction the founding fathers sought to create in the new country. It has been quite successful. The founding fathers in America had the good fortune to be working on a tabula rasa , in dealing with a society with virtually no baggage or history behind it. The constitution they drafted is difficult to replicate in most other parts of the world since most other places have much historical baggage behind them which needs to be addressed. Importantly though, is to remember that a constitution only works where there is a legal and judicial framework to uphold it and that the spirit of the constitution is upheld not only the letter. A number of otherwise well written constitutions have failed around the world for this very reason. It is no good therefor for countries to adopt the American model in the hope that it would work with a few tweeks and modifications. That is a fallacy. In drawing up a constitution real regard has to be made for the history and culture of the people otherwise the spirit would not be there to support the letter of the constitution and it would fail eventually.
I am sure Noah Feldman has been paid handsomely for his work in assisting to draw up the constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan, however I am not sure this bodes well for the constitutions longevity, if anything the opposite, despite his learning, experience and good intentions. The Iraqis and Afghans should have been left to do the work themselves, I am sure they have enough intelligent, well meaning and competent lawyers who can make a good job of it. As to his efforts to try to persuade the West that the introduction of Sharia law and Sunni jurisprudence into the constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq is a good thing, nothing could be more laughable. Islam is generally intolerant of others of other or no faith. What the incorporation of Islamic law into the constitutions would merely do is to validate oppression of minorities, and give that oppression legal status. I am certain that is what the long term effect would be on these societies, and I certainly would not want to live in such a place. If indeed Islamic law is a constraint on leaders then how do we explain the intolerance and oppression in places like Saudi Arabia ?

I don't understand your main point. A constitution says just as much about where a country is going as it does where it came from. If this weren't true, the countries would simply change their constitutions to match their current beliefs or outlooks. If they don't bother changing it, it still says something about where they are going

I have repeated this several times on TE. The American Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence may have been physically written by the Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson, but the "textbook" the FFs used to create these documents came from a singularity - Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746).

Hutcheson was a devout but progressive and revolutionary Ulster-Scots Presbyterian. His most important work had nothing to do with America though, his seminal work was on the "moral sense". Hutcheson basically stated from a position of immense humility that mankind has 6 senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell and the ability to tell right from wrong, the "moral sense", which was given to us by God.

It was this philosophy that inspired Hutcheson to write the legal framework for the US colony to rebel against British Crown. It was this philosophy that inspired Hutcheson to coin the phrase "unalienable rights" and provided the basis for the Bill of Rights and Constitution.

Perhaps the US Constitution does not specifically mention God or Protestants, which is not overly surprising when Jefferson re-wrote the New Testament to exclude any mention of Jesus (but retained his moral philosophy), however, it is beyond doubt the ethos of American Independence, Constitution and human rights is 100% derived from the philosophy of the devout Ulster-Scots Presbyterian Protestant, Francis Hutcheson.

should have written about the indian constitution as well. the truly secular document distances itself from religion without criticizing any of them and even in the oaths the oath takers can say 'I solemnly afirm' instead of swear by god

Why is this a good time to invoke one of Christopher Hitchens' most dogmatic statements, "Religion poisons everything"? Do you have any empirical evidence to show us about how vague references to a non-denominational deity in a constitution increases the religious fanaticism of the population and causes a sectarian war to flare up?
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Or maybe you just like repeating after the latest middle-brow talking points (not strictly the latest either, since Hitchens had his hit almost a decade back).

You didn't explain why this was a good time to quote a truism. Truisms never reflect the facts of the case and are thus rarely good substitutes for logical argument. So you must explain why your truism makes sense in this particular case - which you failed to do.

You have the appearance of a reasoned man, but underneath lies a chatterbox, somewhat like from 1984, who talks all the talking points. Screams middlebrow to me. But don't worry, the world - including the Economist readership - is full of people like you, so you will manage.

I believe in no book of fables, so your ad hominem attack counts little with me.

On a more serious matter, I cannot believe how infantile your response is. We are debating whether the statement 'Religion poisons everything' is true, and whether it is applicable to this article. God does not have to exist to disprove such a sweeping generalization.

And yet you cannot see past your paradigm of militant atheism, and continue to argue in ways that only tangentially touch upon the subject matter.

There is nothing to debate wrt "religion poisons everything". That matter is self evident. And while your statement "..vague references to a non-denominational deity in a constitution" may be technically correct, what does concern the thinking person is why a country such as the US has more people believing that angels are real, than any other nation? For such vague and non-denominational references, you do have an excess of thumpers in the US.

I think there is an important element of the argument that often surrounds constitutions that doesn't receive very much attention- the juxtaposition of the implications of constitutional verbiage and how every action undertaken by a government seems to be contrary to some "spirit" of this original, seemingly infallible law as opposed to the advancement of policy and legislation in a manner that affects a citizenry as a whole in a positive manner and advances a nation yet still seems to be at odds with this [often] arcane set of guidelines.

America is an amazing country with a brilliant constitution. I do not like the inscription "In God we trust" in their coins. But I consider them far better than most countries in the world. They are the most tolerant, generous, compassionate superpower in human history.

Why do people or peoples believe in God? Aside from unconfirmed miracles, most of which have proven to be illusory, there is no evidence of His interest in this tiny Earth and its inhabitants. It made sense when people believed the Earth was the center of the Universe and somehow we are privileged with God’s direct hand in its daily operation but science has proven otherwise.

All religions claim that God comes to the rescue of the oppressed, the innocent, the spiritual etc. How many of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis met those criteria and still God did not rescue them? Or those killed by Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.? Or the little innocent kids killed at Sandy Hook elementary school? Interestingly, people of faith always thank God after a disaster that it was not worse! Thus, God is given credit blindly. If He were truly interested, He could have prevented the disaster from happening in the first place!

Thus, if there is a God who created this Universe, he seems to be indifferent to its struggles. He, perhaps, set the rules and is either watching the spectacle or moved onto other things. There are several photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and a few of them are hanging at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC (and perhaps available at a NASA website). One shows galaxies, supposed to be in the millions (or billions), taken with a field of view one tenth the size of the visible Moon! Imagine how many there are all around of us then! The Universe is so vast and large that even individual galaxies are infinitesimally small, let alone our solar system, our planet and us!

Another picture shows two galaxies colliding. Stars are pulled out of their orbits from their home galaxies. Whether there are actual collisions, it is not known. The forces must be so powerful that entire stars and stellar systems may disintegrate. If, as our astro-physicists claim, there are life forms out there, they must be getting wiped out.

A small meteor caused extinction of dinosaurs on our planet. One cannot even imagine the turmoil going on in such galactic collisions. If God created them, he is either enjoying the show or is totally disinterested and remaining aloof.

Or is the concept of God a prop when life’s situations become unbearable? As children, we ran to our parents when hurt. By pouring our grief to them, we lightened our hearts. Parents were like vast sinks, which could absorb all our troubles. Who do we run to as adults? Is that why the concept of God was created?

As an Atheist, I share your fascination that belief in God is so widespread.

Throughout history, and into the modern age, it seems that belief in God/Gods is really a very important part of human society or human nature, whatever you might call it. How else can we explain that the overwhelming majority of human cultures develop religion and give it such power?

Something innate in us, it must be. Not in you or I, but in most people.

"Why do people or peoples believe in God? Aside from unconfirmed miracles, most of which have proven to be illusory, there is no evidence of His interest in this tiny Earth and its inhabitants. It made sense when people believed the Earth was the center of the Universe and somehow we are privileged with God’s direct hand in its daily operation but science has proven otherwise."

~ Heavens and Earths. Both are pluralized in the original Hebrew texts translated in the septuagint, masoretic and latin vulgate.

"All religions claim that God comes to the rescue of the oppressed, the innocent, the spiritual etc."

~ All religions don't make that claim. Actually the only religions in the entire history of man to make that claim where christian ones. Jews don't blame God when Jobs gets afflictions.

"Or is the concept of God a prop when life’s situations become unbearable? As children, we ran to our parents when hurt. By pouring our grief to them, we lightened our hearts. Parents were like vast sinks, which could absorb all our troubles. "

~ As a child I didn't run to my parents to lighten my troubles. I ran into the desert because the wilderness was soothing where people were not. I think a lot of what you're asking could be answered better simply by reading. Since before the time of Abraham people have talked about other earths and other suns.

I agree with you. But one thing I found interesting is that you bothered to capitalize god throughout your whole text, and that is unusual for an agnostic/atheist. Did you grow up in a religious household?

Just curiosity, as I myself am an atheist and grew up with religious (though not a lot) parents. It's hard to get rid of things we learn a children - such as capitalizing the g in god.

I understand that people 2000 years ago, who didnt have a education and didnt have a clue what the moon was or the stars for that matter would believe in somekind of god, But that people today, with the internet and all the sceince still believe in god is a mystery to me. I think they are either to scared to learn the truth or to Lazy.

I guess its easier to say, -Oh it was god who created us and the skys rather than actually understanding the sceince behind it. Futhermore, the church is still making billions of USD a year and they are not about to let all that money slip anytime soon.

Napoleon Boneparte said it best - Religion was made to keep the poor from murdering the rich and a way to control the masses.

Amazingly, 50% of Americans still dont believe in evolution! The church is truely the biggest and most powerfull franchise we have ever known. The more educated people get, the more they want to know and the less they eventually will believe.

"As a general rule, I found, a constitution says more about where a country is a coming from—which bits of history it wants to celebrate, and which bits it wants to flee from or avoid—than about how the nation is now, or where it wants to go.'

That's pretty ethnocentric, isn't it? Europe and America are becoming more secular and in these cases references to the Deity in national constitutions ares archaic. But, the entire world is not western or Christian.

In countries such as Indonesia, Malaya and much of the Middle East (e.g. Egypt), religion is advancing, not retreating, as a factor in civil codes. Or, the civil codes are being amended to incorporate religious notions such as Sharia. In a few instances this may have found its way into national constitutions -- in other instances, not so much. But, for these states, at least, a secular constitution -- the prime example is Turkey -- is an example not of where the nation is going but where it has been. And, where it no longer wants to be.

The western, traditionally Christian, states count for less and less in world culture. Non-western, non-Christian -- or newly Christian (e.g. Africa) -- states count for progressively more. It is tempting to see the rest of the world as coming around to "our" way of thinking when, in fact, "our way of thinking" may be a decreasingly important island in a surging sea of religiosity.

The ideal world, which will be reached, although a long long time yet in the future, is "You know your enemy, you realize there are no enemies."

Or Mankind will perish.

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World Religions should be made a part of the core curriculum in a 12-year education system, preferably incorporated in the final year of high school, when a young person begins to develop the cognitive apparatus to inquire and appreciate questions addressing faith, a serious subject and a basic "fact of life", a fact no less relevant as any other fact.

From the study, they decide what their chosen faith will be. This is the true meaning of "Freedom of Religion" as per the Constitution. A kid from a Catholic family can convert to Protestant or a kid from a Protestant family can convert to Catholic, etc. This is just one example.

Another subject that should be made a part of a core curriculum in a 12-year education is Economics. This is outside the scope of the present topic.

I am sure you mean well . . . in fact, I KNOW you do. But, what you suggest is that the state substitute itself for the parent. I never wanted my child "deciding" what his faith would be. I wanted him to be raised in the tradition that upheld the spiritual life of his mother and me. That state has no valid interest in my child's spiritual life other than to prevent others from forcibly imposing their beliefs on him and vice-versa.

I am with you on Economics. I teach the subject to juniors and seniors in high school and they seem to find it valuable. Most don't know their FICO score from their 401K. I try to correct that.

No, no, no. You misread. I did not mean the state substitutes for parents. I meant to the extent possible, CHOICES are provided for the children. There are parents who teach things that make no sense in a continually changing world, parents who are extremely uninformed, parents who mislead, parents who distort, parents who misguide, their children. I am sure I do not need to cite examples that necessarity take up more words. They abound. From incest to child abuse to teaching kids to close their minds to a host of things that will benefit the child instead of the teaching of a single religious dogma.

You have made your choice for you. So has your wife. You love your children. One thing you should not do is to assume you own them and their minds.

I am talking not about quashing your belief system helter skelter . No one is talking about that. I am talking about allowing a child, who is NOT your possession, the freedom to think and feel for himself. You don't own your child. If you truly believe in a God, He does.

I just realize we may run into a bad spot given your style of "Andros must be right because he is Andros".
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From my own experience exchanging ideas with you, I will just remind both of us if we disagree, then we agree to disagree, with respect for each other.
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My position is very clear. No one - that is to say, that includes you and me, and Jim and Jane and Ching and Henri and Sanchez and Bundt - knows all there is to be known to be absolutely right about everything, and therefore to make decisions for everyone else, including, yes, even one's very own child when the child is a fully grown human. The best we can do is to try to understand and respect the other person's point of view.
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I agree force should never be used. That goes without saying.
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I also think it is very important to know when one has crossed the line that draws the difference between non-force and force, education and indoctrination.
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The test? You are happy at the end of an educational process the person you educate can think for himself. You are unhappy - sometimes violently so - at the end of an indoctrination process the person can think for himself. Education is about the person you educate. Indoctrination is about the person who indoctrinates.
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No one human being owns another, whether we are talking about mind, heart or soul. That is God's domain if you believe in a God. And none of us is Him. Let's no forget that. Even the Pope.

It is clear to me that that too is a faith. Think about it some more ... if you have thought enough about it to ask the Q.

I am not against faith. Each unto his own. Whatever works, so that we can be kind to our neighbors, instead of being mean, being cruel, being bullyish, being exploitive, being holier than thou, and sometime killing them. That is my faith. :)

I suspect you either work for the government, are in one of the "helping professions" (e.g. social work, psychology, etc.) -- or both. I make this guess because these are the sort of people who invariably know what is good for the rest of us and are determined to impose the same.

Your demarcation between "education" and "indoctrination" is totalitarian double-speak. We indoctrinate children to obey the law, do we not? Or, is it just possible you raised your children with the admonition "Think about whether it is right to steal and come to a conclusion. Whatever you decide, I will understand and respect your conclusion."

Or, perhaps you taught, "Now, some people think gays and coloreds are inferior and dangerous people who should be suppressed. I want you to think that over and if, at age 21, you decide to shoot a black person in the back then I will understand and respect your position."

In other words, you are all against "indoctrination" -- unless you are the one doing the indoctrination.

Education is about the person I educate AND it is about me. Or, rather, my wife and I. We are part of a tradition and we want that tradition transmitted to our offspring. He is not a little tableau rasa on which each and every meddlesome busybody is given a free shot to imprint his theories and ideas - not, at least, while the child was in our care.

If you are as I described in the first paragraph then I would not let you near my child. You are probably trendy, insipid and politically correct. Your values are those which are most popular at a given time among a given crowd of "right-thinkers." Above all, you desire to meddle "for the child's own good" and undercut parental authority.

I'd trust the Pope before I'd trust a government social worker or anyone from "the helping professions."

I agree whole heartedly with the last part of your post - "that we can be kind to our neighbors, instead of being mean, being cruel, being bullyish, being exploitive, being holier than thou, and sometime killing them."

However, I do disagree with the idea that no faith is also a faith. If I do not believe in myths, things that can not be proven, how is that a faith? If I believe in scientific evidence (and not religion), saying that is having faith, then surely believing gravity exists equals having faith too? Sounds absurd to me...

All your "suspicions"in the first paragraph turned out to be dead wrong, as usual. I am thankful at least this time you call them "suspicion", not "you know". That's progress.

I don't want to debate with you. It is pointless for me. I do invite you to read my "test" again in the text I wrote, instead of talking around it, or pretend you didn't read it, a handy convenience for setting up a strawman to argue against - YOUR TRADEMARK. You are, at 80-something (something you would say over and over again in your comments), full-time involved in proving you are right about everything; indeed, more right than the Pope himself.

I am not 80-something. I am not similarly engaged. I have other things to do, more productive things, in my humble view.

I personally note you are disingenuous. You are an old fart. Too cowardly to inititate change, too old to let new information in, too hung up on being right, too ready to use ad homs to obfuscate issues, too habituated to resort to denigration of your opponent as your nuclear weapon. At age 80-something, you have not learned the meaning of RESPECT for people who think differently from you, and you call yourself a God-believer. Shame on you!

I will not respond to your replies again. You are a repeat offender of the worst kind.

Oh, please . . . I can out-write and out-think any ten of you young'uns with an arm tied behind my back. Most of you have a short time perspective and simply rebottle whatever cant is spouted by the media. Not everyone -- several write well and think for themselves.

The long perspective of time gives one an enormous advantage: one has seen fads come and go. Right now the fads are gay marriage, inclusion and diversity. Sixty years ago the fads were Togetherness, The Family That Prays Together, Stays Together and fear of Godless, Atheistic Communism.

I saw Joe McCarthy out and if I live long enough I may see off the current politically correct hysteria. But, there is one thing of which I am certain -- some mass, conventional wisdom as trite and tyrannical as any that went before will come next.

Sir, 80 long years and none of that time has been spent reading my comments? What have you been doing with your life?

If you read some of my other posts or even the post I left on this article, perhaps you would re-assess your conclusion that I follow fads, am politically correct, support gay marriage or am an atheist.

Despite your 80 years, I find it highly likely my perspective and understanding of history and politics has greater depth than yours. Through the savage beat of time your cognitive capacity has moved towards the wrong end of the Gaussian distribution. There are less quantised energy bursts emanating from the sparse concentration of remaining active neurons. The synaptic pathways they create degenerate much more rapidly, explaining the increased processing time your brain requires to give clear access to memories, particularly short-term memories.

While your prose and conventionalities yet remain sound, sooner rather than later your IQ will be even lower than Ashbird's. Happens to the best of though, right?

My "quantitized energy bursts" are not, I admit, what they used to be. But, my wife tells me to keep trying. Even in a desert it rains now and then so I shouldn't give up hope. (She is a very patient woman.)

I don't think my synaptic pathway is in all that bad a shape because a few years ago we had new flagstone laid from the garden to the back porch. It does, though, badly need edging.

As for my "short-term memories," I am quite positive . . . ah, . . . what is it we were talking about?

"I notice that nearly every line you wrote is ad hominem...I still think you are in government/helping professions or training to be such. No one with a REAL job would write your kind of insipid tripe."
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Andros, I must admit your posts can be quite entertaining. First, you accuse another of using ad-hominems, which you then follow immediately with an ad-hominem.
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Brilliant, sir. :)

I think you're right that parents should not expect to provide the only input their child receives and school is one of the places the children will hear something else. Even in a religious school. My sister and brother-in-law put their sons in a Catholic school where, on paper, they agree with what's taught. But there is still a lot of eye-rolling at things they hear or hear were heard. Without a Skinner box, nobody has to be told that their children will have other perspectives, although not everyone believes it.

It's like God's judgement or the laws of physics. You can choose to believe that children should have other sources of information besides what the parents prescribe or you can choose to believe they should not but it all happens anyway.

Thank you, Doug, for amplifying my point. I was merely trying to say when you disallow a child to think for himself, you are indoctrinating, not educating. Indoctrinating is about control and power over another. That is not the goal of education, unless you are a dictator.

My frustration - a frustration that is not new, but one to be renewed again and again by my own negligent biting into his skilled baiting - in talking to Andros is he will not address an issue you raise. He will not read what you write but instead he will TELL you what you have written.

And then he proceeds to attack the strawman he made up and pontificate from there.

He then condesends and disparages and gets nasty in the process, a behavior I read to be a tactic to shift, to distract and to confound the issues he doesn't know how to adress. I have seen Jerry Falwell do it many times. In formal debates, we call this dirty cheating.

My IQ has been tested to be at 99%ile. I have two doctoral degrees (JD, PhD) I write in two langauges (English, Chinese) on subjects ranging from law, psychiatry, literature and classical music. I am currently an extension music student in a Music Conservatory. I am also an artist in Chinese painting and calligraphy. My works have been shown in exhibitions.

Oh, I also have many suitors. I only talk to those who wo can think for themselves.

I provide the forgoing information only for the reason of defending myself against Andros' vicicous and repeated efforts to smear me in the TE blog community. This is not the first time he tried. The first time he accused me of lying about the charity work I did.

The above answers every smear point he threw out in his posts against Ashbird, his second major effort to smear Ashbird. Perhaps he thinks Ashbird is a Chinaman and he can walk all over her. "Chinaman don't complain", they say.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clear the vicious smearing.

I all fairness to my opponent, I did my share of ad homs. No excuse there except all the historical reasons, yet again refreshed, finally culminated to a point I no longer could tolerate. It was the same stuff repeated the nth time. I lost it.

Huh? Have you any idea what you are talking about? As late as the 17th century in England the Church of England was locking up people for being dissenters to its views, whilst 'Germany' was the site of the 30 years war that killed off 30% of the population. To even vaguely equate those abuses with the mild harassment that atheists might suffer in some of the more obscure corners of the bible belt is gross ignorance, just as the Christians who scream 'persecution' when the slightest challenge to their behaviour is challenged are equally hyper sensitive. We all need to be a little bit more robust in our willingness to engage energetically but respectfully...

Actually yes I do have rather an informed idea of what I am talking about.

Though I completely agree with what you say, I cannot understand why you said it. When the atrocities you speak of occurred, life was full of persecution, death, and oppression, so that behaviour was the norm. The world is still full of the same and is still as hypocritical.

Lets talk about the story around our wonderful Pilgrim Fathers was how they left Britain to escape religious persecution.

Somehow the details of that persecution was omitted - they left because they were no longer allowed to burn, stack or drown witches, a practice they happily continued to execute when they arrived in America.

Religions baffle me, though I am impressed at how clever and virtually complete they are as a marketing scam – If I could invent a similar product, that fails to deliver what it promises as often as religions do - yet seems to attract more and more gullible clients every day – I would be rich and in the wonderful position to give my wealth to causes that make sense.

Another way to look at Constitutional language is to understand the context of the basic document: most constitutions have very basic purposes including a leadership succession scheme, a leader power-limiting scheme, and a lot of personal property law. In Western nations, where it took centuries to wriggle out from under the thoroughly hypocritical and corrupt influence of the papacy, amendments to constitutions eventually affirmed personal freedoms, including religious choice.

But what constitutions universally fail to do is to look forward to accomplish justice in areas such as:

- reigning in the unchecked fiscal and political power of multinational corporations, which are not democratic institutions

- explicitly stating the responsibilities of citizenship. In most nations, place of birth is considered the primary determinant, with inadequate regard to population migration, heritage of parents (i.e., the "anchor baby"/"pregnant tourist" problems), and the concept of losing one's rights as punishment for felony.

- endowing local communities the democratic right to preserve or manage its natural resources. In countries where the richest corporations have ability to literally write their own laws, which includes zoning laws and city planning, local citizens of a community have little or no leverage to stop environmental destruction or natural resource abuse. Hence we see South American and African Nations giving away its bounty to China. Corrupt leaders are enriched, but are local populations compensated for the destruction of their communities?

- Providing adequate protections for nature. As laws are rewritten by corporate lobbyists to maximize short-term profit, the very life-sustaining mechanisms of the planet are being destroyed slowly but irreversibly. Constitutional defense of nature is needed to stop habitat & resource destruction on which all life depends.

- ban offensive war. Isn't it interesting how many "defense" weapons are deployed in foreign theatres? Thankfully there are a few nations (Japan) that were sufficiently ashamed of its past war-mongering ways to spell out a constitutional limitation on military projection. The most powerful nations on the planet today should follow this sensible lead.

Many americans would argue that it is its careful exclusion of religion from government which has made modern america so religious. Without the government to muck it up, the "private" sector has had to compete to make their message more relevant to the population.

Ironically, despite the onslaught of all flavors of tax-free social club churches in the USA, an objective observer could hardly describe its memberships as "religious".
They are fervent in their rhetoric, surely, but are largely uninformed of the origin & heritage of their religion/sects -- which of course leads them to discriminate against those who don't fit their twisted ideas that have evolved from entirely corrupt origins. Worse still, the self-proclaimed "religious" Americans act essentially a political body that does not recognize its own hypocrisy. After all, it doesn't take long to find in a Bible some justification for doing whatever one wants to do anyway.
Sadly, it has long been this way. The "heathen" and "savage" Native Americans, prior to being subjected to missionaries, typhoid blankets, & musket, were as godly a people as any that walked this planet. Such a shame that self-proclaimed Christians felt the need to brainwash or exterminate them to make way for people who worshipped the proper god. Today, instead of scalping those who don't believe in organized religion, free-thinkers are ostracised and villified. E.g., witness the cowardly and disgusting attacks by these "religious" people on scientists and authors such as Richard Dawkins. Christian soldiers indeed, with every bit as much blood on their hands as the fabled Templars.

Are you Richard Dawkins? All one has to do to draw the condescending ire from a religious nut is to use objective observable data to draw a conclusion that is relevant for the planet and its inhabitants today.
Moreover, over in America, the hypocrisy continues:http://www.churchlawandtax.com/library/liability--church-and-state-issue...
Many people find the materialism and profit-maximizing ways of evangelical churches repulsive -- especially as they see their city halls and public parks taken over regularly by fundraising activities by tax-free religious organizations.
"When you have pastors thinking of themselves as CEOs, it's hard to tell the difference between a pastor and P-Diddy," Jonathan Walton, Assistant Professor of religious studies at the University of California Riverside.
Further reading on the continued corruption of what might have been a decent guidebook for fishermen and shepherds to live by 2k years ago: http://www2.ku.edu/~geography/Docs/Barney%20papers/megachurches.pdf

I wish journalists would get these very elementary points right ....
As hannibal_barca has pointed out, several American states had established churches/religion after independence.
The Queen is not "head of the Church of England" but its Supreme Governor, and she is not even that in regard to the Church of Scotland. The Church of Scotland's supreme authority is its General Assembly, tho' the monarch takes an oath on his/her accession to "preserve" the said Church.

Dear Sir Barca, you are too generous in assuming that ignorance is always the reason when we use formulas that you wouldn't choose. We stand by the word "head" to describe the monarch's role in the Church of England. Let's agree that "guarantor" might be a more precise word to describe the role she and her Lord High Commissioner play in Scotland. (I wouldn't like to brush with a Lord High Commissioner myself..) As for the religious establishment in American states, it is precisely for that reason, among others, that early Americans would have found the lack of any federal state-religion surprising. But it's always useful to be reminded of that point.

Would you care to explain why you stand by the word "head" to describe the Queen's very limited role in the Church of England? In practice it's hardly greater than her role in Scotland, yet you are happy to concede that "guarantor" is more accurate in that case.

As you will be aware, Henry VIII took the title "Head of the Church of England", but no subsequent monarch has chosen to use that formula (it's not just a matter of *my* personal choice). It seems a little anachronistic therefore to employ it nearly five centuries later.

As a Yank, my conception of the Queen or any king of England is that the authority of the monarch is technically used in lieu of the Pope in order to ensure that the Anglican church is ultimately a creature of England rather than Rome. If you asked me if the queen were "head of the Church", I'd answer saying that technically yes she is, but in practice, the Archbishop of Canterbury runs the show-- similar to how she is the "head of state" even though Parliament is really governing. Likewise, I'd observe that it is unlikely that Camilla could ultimately have the same role as the queen, due to the quasi-religious nature of the monarchy. I think the semantics of TE are adequate, while recognizing that the specifics in titles might be a bit off.